Teacher has COVID-19; 52 students sent to isolation, school shut

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Incidents highlight problems as education system set to return to full operation on Sunday; teacher had been in contact with staff too, school to remain shut until May 27.

A teacher at the Navon school in the central city of Rehovot has been diagnosed with coronavirus and found to have been in contact with 52 students and the school staff who have all been sent to isolation, officials said Friday.

The school will be shut until May 27, the school’s principal informed parents. The incident comes as Israel’s education system was set to return to full operation on Sunday in most of the country after some two months during which Israeli children were ordered to stay home in order to contain the spread of the coronavirus. 

After the woman was diagnosed, an investigation found she had been in contact with two classes of children, and all the teaching and administrative staff in the school. They were all sent to two weeks of home quarantine.

The Health Ministry and Rehovot municipality said they were jointly monitoring the situation and would take further steps if necessary.

Also Friday, officials said that an assistant at the Galil elementary school in Tel Aviv had also come down with the virus. Seven children and a teacher she had been in contact with also been sent to quarantine.

The plan to return all students to schools across much of the country Sunday came after many local authorities rejected the Education Ministry’s earlier outline for reopening schools, which would have seen fourth and tenth graders in their communities return to class only part-time. (Grades 1-3 and 11-12 have already resumed partial studies).

The municipal leaders had said the blanket plan for students to study on intermittent days was ineffective for both students and parents and demanded a return to full studies.

The plan approved Thursday returns all students to daycares, kindergartens and schools full-time, except for areas that have been centers of outbreaks in the last two months, some of which have been under lockdown.

Those areas are predominantly, but not exclusively, ultra-Orthodox cities, communities and neighborhoods.

The list of outbreak areas will be reexamined and possibly altered shortly before June 1, the statement said.

Schools will enforce hygiene rules such as washing hands, and every pupil will have to present a document saying they are healthy upon arrival at school.

All pupils will be required to wear face masks during recess in open areas, and those in grades 4-12 will also wear them in class.

They will also have to keep a two-meter distance from one another during lunch breaks, while schools and kindergartens are required to hold most of their activities in places that allow for the mandatory distance to be maintained.

Students will go for breaks between classes in smaller groups, not all at the same time.

Institutions where a coronavirus patient has been discovered will be closed according to a prearranged procedure.

The statement also said a small team headed by the director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office will be formed to prepare the education system for the scenario of a second wave of infections.

Fifteen local authorities, including Tel Aviv and Haifa, last week informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that they would not comply with the Education Ministry’s earlier outline for partial return for grades 4-10, writing in a letter to the premier that “the return outline for students in grades 4-10 does not constitute a return to studies and is not a solution for anyone.”

“The children are not guinea pigs and the parents are looking for real solutions,” said the letter, penned by Haim Bibas and Shai Hajaj, leaders of the Local Government Center, a nonprofit that represents local authorities. “The suggested solutions are unsatisfactory and in the absence of a realistic outline we will not return the fourth and tenth graders to school.”

Israel’s education system was shut down in mid-March, with teachers and pupils switching to remote learning methods instead. As other sectors of society and commerce have been permitted to reopen, there has been increasing pressure from local authorities and parents to restart schools.

The announcement came as Health Ministry figures continued to show no more than a few dozen new infections daily. Israel has taken a series of steps in the last few weeks to begin gradually reopening its economy and rolling back restrictions on movement and small gatherings, with many clamoring for a swifter return to levels of service seen in pre-pandemic days.

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com, by TOI staff

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